Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1927

So we left Shanghai on October 19th and arrived in Nagasaki in the late afternoon of the next day. Arriving at a new port in a new country always seems to have a special thrill for me, and Nagasaki was one of the best. The opening into the harbor is quite long and narrow. Once inside it opens up and part of the city is built on steep hillsides overlooking the bay. I found it a most satisfactory scene because it looked so completely what it was supposed to be - Japanese. True, there was a big shipbuilding yard on one side of the harbor but the water was pretty well covered with sampans and gray unpainted diesel-powered fishing boats. And the city was composed mostly of typically gray unpainted Japanese buildings with paper screens and thatched or tiled roofs. All so oriental appearing but different somehow from all the Chinese cities we'd just been seeing up the Yangtze Valley. Everyone was very excited about going ashore, but out of the question that evening of course but two oldtimers who had been there before managed to slip into a sampan after dark and get ashore for a couple of hours.

Next morning Japanese doctors came on board wearing gauze masks over their noses and mouths, something we were to find fairly common in Japan later, and the information was passed around that anyone in the liberty section that day who wanted to go ashore must first submit a pillbox sample of body waste to be checked for the presence of disentery germs before he could leave the ship. The reason being that we had just come from central China where the disease was quite common. Well that was a surprise and shock to us but anyone knowing anything about the Marblehead crew would know that we could satisfy the authorities one way or another to get on the first liberty boat.

Southern Japan in those days was just as pretty and intriguing as it was in pictures and I loved it. There is no point in my going into a long description of Japan in 1927 because thee are old books by such people as Lafcardio Hearn that give a beautiful image of the place as it used to be. Suffice to say I covered the entire city on foot and then hired a bicycle to ride out country roads until I was stopped by signs in Japanese and English saying "No entrance, beginning of military restricted area".

There was a delightful restaurant overlooking the bay called, of all things, the Alhambra. It was managed by the Japanese wife, or ex-wife, I don't now which, of an American chief petty officer. The speciality of the house was excellent salad made of vegetables just picked out of the garden and a big slab of Australian steak served with two fried eggs sunny side up resting on top of it. That's one place that stands out in one's memory no matter how many thousands of restaurants you visit over the world.